Like the Palo Alto City Council, we strive to be more effective by focusing our efforts. Therefore, for 2016,we developed key areas of concentration based on input from Midtown residents. They include:

Our focus on Safety and Community Building encourages Midtown residents to attend PA-CERT and Red Cross training, become Block Preparedness Coordinators, and be aware of potential crime activity in their block.

Areas of focus include the shopping areas, traffic on Oregon and in the neighborhoods, traffic impacts from new development, the High Speed Rail project, VTA bus routes and pedestrian and bicycle safety.

The Midtown Residents Association is focusing on "building community" and communicating with residents. Many of the standing committees will emphasize aspects of building community -- Membership, Welcome New Residents, the Midtown History Book, and the School Liaison committees. MRA will work to connect everyone to Midtown who wants to participate, at whatever their level of interest. We will expand our electronic coverage of the neighborhood in both enews and on the MRA website, and further build our communication on key city issues and emergency preparation.

Midtown Center

Our focus will be to see that all Midtown shopping areas, Middlefield businesses as well as Alma Plaza, conform to the MRA Goals of Neighborhood Serving Retail which are: Local Scale, Pedestrian/Bicycle/Vehicle Safety, and Retail Variety/Convenience.

Places are just dots on the map, spots down the street, until we connect them with people who bring them to life and give them significance. In our series on notable people in the MRA News, we connect these people to the places we pass every day and show how our neighborhood has evolved.